The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan to the idyllic
jungle world of Deva Loka, which is being surveyed for possible Earth
colonisation. Deva Loka is already home to a race of apparent savages,
however: a mysterious people with strange powers which have mentally
unbalanced the members of the expedition. To make matters worse, an
ancient enemy of the natives -- a serpentine being called the Mara --
still lurks on Deva Loka. The Mara is intent upon revenge, and latches
onto Tegan's mind as its bridgehead to victory.

Production

Amongst the new writers approached by Doctor Who script editor
Christopher H Bidmead in early 1980 was an English graduate named
Christopher Bailey, who had contributed plays to Second City
Firsts and ITV Playhouse. Bailey was a student of Buddhism,
and devised a satire of nineteenth-century British colonisation combined
with elements of Buddhist mysticism. A storyline entitled “The
Kinda” was commissioned on April 10th. In developing his ideas,
Bailey may have been influenced by the Ursula K LeGuin novel The Word
For World Is Forest (1972), about the discovery of a planet where
the natives possess unexpected powers, although Bailey professes no
memory of having read it.

By the time full scripts for “The Kinda” were requested on
September 25th, change was in the air on Doctor Who. Although
Bailey had conceived his storyline with Tom Baker's Doctor in mind, it
was now known that Baker would be leaving the programme at the end of
Season Eighteen. This forced Bailey to reimagine the Doctor's function
in “The Kinda”: he had originally envisioned the Doctor
playing the role of a “wise sage”, but the younger Doctor
anticipated by the production team would no longer suit this portrayal.
Furthermore, two new companions were being introduced in the form of
Adric and Tegan. Bailey duly accounted for these changes, and began work
on his scripts.

There was no room in the plot for Nyssa, and making
wholesale changes to include her might damage the storyline

Later in the autumn, however, it was decided to retain Nyssa as a
regular character as well. This presented a greater difficulty for
Bailey: there was no room for a third companion in his plot, and he and
Bidmead were concerned that the wholesale changes necessitated by her
inclusion would damage the storyline. Consequently, it was agreed that
Nyssa should appear only at the start and end of the serial, but would
be written out of the main action. This echoed a practise common on
Doctor Who throughout the Sixties, when members of the regular
cast would be omitted from an episode once or twice per season in order
to afford them a week's holiday.

Bailey infused “The Kinda” with many Buddhist terms and
ideas. In particular, he named many of the characters after Buddhist
words, including the Mara (“temptation”), Dukkha
(“suffering”), Panna (“wisdom”), Karuna
(“compassion”), Anicca (“impermanence”) and
Anatta (“without self”). The Jhana Box (also spelt
“Jana Box” in the scripts) alluded to a Buddhist meditative
state of complete immersion, while Deva Loka was named for the heavenly
realm of supernatural beings (called “devas”). Sanders, on
the other hand, was named for the 1935 film Sanders Of The
River.

Bailey made great use of symbolism in his depiction of Tegan's dream
environment (which he referred to as “the Wherever”). Some
of this -- such as the phallic nature of the Mara's serpentine form --
was felt to be too adult, and had to be toned down. Other aspects of
“The Kinda” also needed considerable work. Bailey's lack of
familiarity with Doctor Who resulted in his scripts being
generally slow-paced and lacking proper cliffhangers. There was also
concern about the Doctor's minimal involvement in the action, as well as
the lack of definition of the Mara as a tangible enemy.

Three script editors worked with Bailey on “The Kinda”:
Bidmead (who left Doctor Who at the end of 1980), his interim
replacement Antony Root, and finally Eric Saward. Saward initially
received a short-term appointment in the event that Root was able to
rejoin Doctor Who. During the summer of 1981, however, Root was
given a permanent job script-editing Juliet Bravo, and so Saward
agreed to remain on Doctor Who. “The Kinda” would be
his first story into production. The relationship between Bailey and
Saward was uneasy, as the author felt that the script editor was
performing unnecessarily broad rewrites on his episodes, forcing him to
make further changes at the last minute in an attempt to find middle
ground.

Kinda followed a two-month
break in production while Peter Davison recorded his sitcom Sink Or Swim

In mid-June, the title of Bailey's serial was modified slightly to
simply Kinda. It was the first story to go before the cameras
after an almost two-month break in production, which enabled new star
Peter Davison to record the second season of his popular sitcom Sink
Or Swim. By now, the scripting problems which had caused such
upheaval before the hiatus had largely been resolved, and with the
exception of the premiere adventure, Castrovalva, the remainder of Season Nineteen
would be made in broadcast order. This included Kinda, which was
designated Serial 5Y.

The director was Peter Grimwade, who had last helmed Tom Baker's
swangsong, Logopolis. Ironically, Grimwade
cast Richard Todd in the role of Sanders; Todd had starred in the 1963
remake of Sanders Of The River (which had also been distributed
under the title of Death Drums Along The River). During
rehearsals, producer John Nathan-Turner disapproved of Bailey's intended
final scene, in which Sanders and Hindle link arms and walk into the
forest, holding a flower. He feared that this would appear too campy,
and ordered that it be excised from the shooting script.

Kinda was made in two three-day studio blocks, both of which took
place in BBC Television Centre Studio 8. The first session, from July
29th to 31st, concentrated on sequences inside the expedition dome; some
material in the Wherever was also completed on the third day. The second
block spanned August 12th to 14th. This time, scenes in the Deva Lokan
forest were the focus, although the remaining Wherever sequences were
recorded on the 12th, while work on the 14th included the material in
Panna's cave and her vision (referred to in the scripts as being set in
“the Beyond”).

Eric Saward was forced to ask Christopher Bailey to
provide four minutes of material to pad out the last episode

Unfortunately, the second studio block proved very tense: Grimwade was
extremely unhappy with the forest set, which he felt did little to
conceal its studiobound nature. In particular, significant amounts of
time were lost concealing the studio floor beneath scattered leaves,
resulting in Grimwade eventually proceeding without camera rehearsals.
Even with this concession, Grimwade was forced to abandon some of his
planned shots, including a complex effects sequence in which Panna in
seen to be sat atop a crumbling plinth. The loss of this scene, into
which much thought and planning had been invested, infuriated visual
effects designer Peter Logan, who subsequently requested that special
effects be given greater consideration by Doctor Who directors in
the future.

In editing, it was discovered that although parts one and two overran
significantly (resulting in a number of minor edits), episode four could
not be made to stretch to its requisite duration. Because of the
structure of the third installment, it would be difficult to move up
material to help fill the gap, as was the normal practise. Consequently,
on September 30th, Saward was forced to ask Bailey -- who was already
working on a sequel to Kinda, called Snakedance -- to provide four minutes' worth
of extra material featuring only the regular cast to pad out the
episode. Bailey developed two scenes set in the expedition dome's
airlock, one involving Tegan and Adric discussing Hindle's bomb, and
another in which the Doctor assures them that Hindle is no longer a
threat. These two scenes were recorded in TC8 on November 11th, during
the making of Earthshock, Grimwade's next
Doctor Who serial.